A Smell of Decay and Night
by ncfan
Summary: Three conversations Eärendil and Elwing had, in the nights before Idril and Tuor left for Valinor.
1. Chapter One

I own nothing.

* * *

The streets of Sirion tended to go silent and empty not long after dusk. Apart from the occasional candle burning in a window and the still-open taverns and inns, there were very few up and about. The night was muggy and humid, as it often was. The flagstones gleamed wetly from the recent rains. As he walked, Eärendil was hit with the sickly-sweet stench of rotting vegetables, wafting out from a narrow alley and commingling with the omnipresent brine.

Eärendil liked Sirion best during the day, when the Sun hit the white-washed buildings and made them shine, when the Sun banished the main host of the shadows. But there was something to be said for the hush that fell over the city at night. It let him think. He needed to think.

Elwing's fingers, intertwined with his own, slackened a bit, and he looked over at her, brow furrowed. She was tired, he could tell. Elwing was much shorter than Eärendil, and even when he walked slowly, she had to exert herself to match his pace and not lag behind. She tired easily to start with, but he could see the sweat making tendrils of her hair cling to her neck.

"Do you want to turn back?" he asked her.

To this, Elwing shook her head languidly. All the same, her voice was clear as she replied, "I am quite well. I'd been wanting to breathe air unrestrained by walls."

Eärendil decided not to point out that the Havens of Sirion was a walled city (Albeit one whose walls were crumbling and completely caved-in in places, without the resources to repair them). But a smile worked its way up on his lips. "Are you not concerned, my Lady—" Elwing raised an eyebrow at his sudden turn of speech "—with the way it might appear to some, that we have been out, alone and for so long, at night?"

She smirked, an uncommonly devious look playing on her face, and made only more so by the flickering torchlight. "I can go anywhere I please with my betrothed, at any hour. Besides, unlike you, I do not have parents to risk offending."

"No, you just have the entire Sindarin court."

He had said this with a jaunty smile, but that smile of Eärendil's quickly evaporated, to be replaced with a frown. The Sindarin court had indeed been deeply offended when their Queen announced her intention to wed the son of the Queen of the Gondolindrim and her Mannish husband. Eärendil could not quite tell what offended them more, whether it was because he was the son of a Noldo or what the Sindar called a "Peredhel."

After the sack of Menegroth, the murder of King Dior, Queen Nimloth, and the Princes Eluréd and Elurín, Eärendil could, on some level, understand why the Sindar were opposed to the idea of Elwing marrying one who was kin to the Kinslayers. He understood it, but the thought still made his blood boil. Eärendil was not _close _kin to the Kinslayers. His grandfather had been first cousin to them, but even then, Turgon and the Sons of Fëanor had had only their paternal grandfather in common, having different grandmothers. Eärendil himself was not the close cousin of the Kinslayers, and glad of it, but the Sindar believed that even one drop of blood in common with the killers of their people was one drop too many.

What rankled more, however, was the implication that it was also on account of Tuor, of Eärendil's human blood, that the Sindar did not consider him worthy of their Queen. It had already stung before then, his status in the eyes of so many of the Elves. The Gondolindrim refused to accept Eärendil as his mother's heir. Turgon may have happily blessed the marriage of his daughter Idril Celebrindal to Tuor, son of Huor, but there were many in Gondolin, beside the King's nephew, who were not happy with it.

"_The Lady has married far beneath her station," _they said. _"Even the mightiest of Edain Kings would be too low-born for a daughter of the Eldar. And look at the child of their union. Look at how he speeds to manhood. He will grow aged and decrepit, as his father has done. Do we wish for that in our next King?"_

The Sindar felt the same. _"Look at how he speeds to manhood_," they whispered behind their hands, ignoring entirely the way their Queen had sped to womanhood just as quickly. Eärendil called it fate; the Sindar very much did not. What's worse, Eärendil knew quite well that their first King's daughter had married a Man, and that Elwing was a descendant of that union. He didn't know how the Iathrim court had reacted when Lúthien Tinúviel wedded Beren Erchamion (though Eärendil knew exactly how opposed Thingol had initially been to the idea), but he felt that if they had tolerated it then, surely they could tolerate it now. _What, do I have to go cut a Silmaril off of the Enemy's crown too before they will accept me? Do I have to lose a hand and be killed?_

"As I have said before, they will just have to be offended," Elwing remarked stiffly, adjusting her gauzy scarf with her free hand.

Yes, she had said that. Eärendil wasn't sure how Elwing had convinced her nobles to fall in line. He could never picture her shouting or making threats; Elwing was so quiet that he couldn't see her leveling threats against anyone, for any reason. He could quite easily imagine her giving the more recalcitrant lords and ladies a very specific look. It was a look he'd only ever seen on her face, that only Elwing could manage successfully. It was not a glare, exactly; it did not have enough passion in it to be a glare. The look was one of such utter disapproval and disbelief that anyone who had the misfortune to be fixed with it wilted and gave way almost immediately.

_As it stands, I don't suppose that I should complain that she found a way to convince them._

They moved up the town, through the streets both wide and narrow, avoiding the alleyways as they could, as the smell of brackish water grew stronger and stronger. It was similar to the brine, but Eärendil knew the two well enough to differentiate between them.

"Ah, the shipyards," Elwing muttered when she saw where they were, the disapproval in her voice unmistakable.

Eärendil ignored her, rushing forward up the scaffolding to his nearly-finished ship, beaming just to be able to see her.

He had received sufficient instruction from Círdan and Voronwë as regards to shipbuilding to begin building one of his own. Vingilot, or Vingilótë, as his mother insisted on referring to it (in _proper _Quenya, she would say, and not the strange amalgamation of Sindarin and Quenya used by so many of the Exiles) was constructed from white birch wood and was, in Eärendil's eyes, the most beautiful ship that had ever been constructed. It was also due to be finished in two weeks.

Eärendil had been deeply enamored of the sea and of sailing since he first laid eyes on the former, so many years ago when he and his family came to Sirion as refugees. Since he had laid eyes on the deep blue sea, he had longed to travel, to see distant lands, to look upon the depths of the sea. Over the years, that longing never abated, never ceased, never waned. It only grew stronger, even as other wants and needs and desires came into conflict with it, and now, even now, when he was betrothed to the one whom he loved, due to be wed soon, it was so strong that he could taste it upon his lips. So strong that it was like a living thing.

His eyes turned towards another ship, newly-finished, smaller and sleeker than Vingilot. It was the ship his parents had built, Eärrámë. (But not for sailing, no. For the final voyage of an aging Man who could no longer tell past from present, not properly, and kept calling him by the names of childhood friends who were all long gone. Eärendil needed to think about that, still.)

"Well, I am glad to see you love the ship so." For once, when she spoke of his ship, there was no acid in Elwing's voice. He turned about and saw her making her way slowly up the scaffolding, clutching her long pearl-gray skirt in one hand, and clinging to the rail with another. At the top of the steps it was a large leap to the platform, and Eärendil held his hand out to aid her. "You've driven Lord Círdan nearly to distraction these past few months over it, after all."

"You are still sure you don't wish to accompany me on Vingilot's maiden voyage?" Eärendil tries hopefully.

Elwing snorted indelicately, folding her slight arms across her chest. "Certainly not. You may love your ship, and the sea, but I very much prefer to have my feet on _solid_ ground, thank you."

"I won't let you drown, Elwing."

"Oh, I've no doubt of that, love," she murmured resignedly. The wind blew her glossy black curls into her face and she brushed them out of her eyes irritably. "But I might drown anyways. The sea is not a hound or a stray cat that can be tamed, Eärendil. I wish you would realize that."

"I tamed it well enough when we were small," Eärendil protested. Some of his fondest memories of his childhood, after the Fall of Gondolin, was of sailing his coracle in the shallows, Elwing sitting in the craft with him and giggling despite her tremors at every ripple of the ocean, and Círdan, or Voronwë (or both), sitting on the sand watching them to make sure the tides didn't pull the coracle too far out.

Elwing smiled gently. "A coracle made out of reeds is a far cry from a ship such as this. Besides, I have my duty to my people. You know that."

Eärendil nodded, willing to concede the point. The Sindar were already disgruntled enough with the idea of their Queen marrying him. It was profitless to tempt their wrath any further by drawing the Queen away from her people, possibly for months at a time.

They lapsed into silence. Elwing's hand fluttered at her throat, fingertips running over her skin as though she expected to find something else there. A soft, winding breeze played through Eärendil's hair, softly caressed his skin. He turned his eyes westwards, towards the sea. The sky was spangled with stars, the only map a mariner could ever truly rely upon. But on the horizon, the westward, horizon, there were the glimmering lights.

"You know," he said softly, "when I was little, I would pretend that those were the lights of a city on the shores of the Undying Lands."

It was a silly thought, and Elwing was well-aware of that. "Eärendil, those are the lights of Balar," she pointed out, frowning. "The Undying Lands are far too distant for us to see anything of them from here."

"I know, I know." Eärendil stared out past the lights, towards the fathomless black of night. "But you hear the sailors talking sometimes, and they'll say that if you're on the sea at sunset, and can't see land in any direction, there will be this flash of light just as the sun disappears. It's supposed to be the light of the lamp of the Mindon Eldaliéva in Tirion upon Túna."

Elwing fidgeted with her sleeve hem. She was staring out as well, but with little of the love Eärendil bore in his eyes when he stared out at the sea. There was a straining look on her face, frustrated and uncomprehending (Like she was trying to see what he saw when he looked upon deep blue waters). "That sounds something like legends I've heard from the Edain living here in the city. Something about strange creatures with the upper bodies of Edain men and women, but the lower bodies of fish?"

Eärendil nodded. "Merfolk, or sirens." His tone was distant, far-away, as he explained the story to her. "Sailors say they sit on rocks out in the ocean, and sing sweet tunes to lure you to your deaths."

Elwing fixed him in her piercing gaze. "Do you think," she asked him quietly, "that perhaps something like that has happened to you?"

The thing about Elwing was that she had a habit of asking questions that were both deeply personal and utterly uncomfortable. She asked questions that could stop a man dead in his tracks, silence him completely. Eärendil was no different. He stared at her, trying to find something to say, wanting so badly to deny it, but no matter how he searched, he could not find the words.


	2. Chapter Two

The rain had come up on them suddenly. At first, it was a gentle shower that Eärendil could easily withstand, and Elwing barely noticed. Then, the drops grew heavier and faster, beating down on their heads and shoulders, and the two of them dove into the nearest still-open establishment they could find, seeking shelter. The rain pounded upon the roof of what was revealed to be an inn, as though stones were being thrown upon the buildings.

Truth be told, Eärendil had endured worse storms than this. In the Gondolindrim's months of wandering before they finally reached the Havens of Sirion, the refugees of his lost home were assailed with bitter storms, thunder crashing over their heads. Storms always seemed worse at sea than they did on land. The ground beneath his feet was not solid, and didn't stay in one place. A gale could toss a ship about, sunder it prow to stern. Voronwë, a friend of Tuor's (who was planning on sailing with Tuor and Idril into the West), had told him terrible stories of the fury of the waves of the high seas when he was a boy.

He'd endured worse storms than this. So had Elwing, probably. But in all honesty, that did not mean that either of them liked being rained on. It did not mean that Eärendil felt like being rained on at the moment.

It was early yet in the evening, and it seemed unlikely that the rain would be letting up any time soon. The two of them, however illustrious Eärendil's parentage might have been, however illustrious Elwing might have been on her own, were rarely recognized when they went about in the streets of Sirion, or at the very least, no one seemed to care that they were who they were. When Eärendil asked the innkeeper if there was any food left over from supper, the two of them were shown to the common room without any fuss and told to wait just a few minutes.

"It's strange, how easily I'd forgotten how the rains can come so quickly, and so hard," Elwing murmured, staring out the window into the rainy gloom. Her fingers were wound together, elbows on her lap, and she'd half-hidden her mouth behind her hands.

"Well, I'm glad one of us can forget," Eärendil replied in a mutter, wringing out his tunic for what felt like the thousandth time, and finding that, still, some dampness remained clinging to the fabric.

"Don't do that! What will the innkeeper say?"

"Nothing worse than what she said when we dripped all over her floor before, I'd imagine."

"Hmm."

Elwing returned to her silent appraisal of the rain, watching the pounding drops fall onto the flagstones. Eärendil, in turn, watched her.

There were lanterns lighting up the common room, of course, and even a simple chandelier made of birch wood hanging from the ceiling, candles flickering upon it. They could not light up the whole room, though, and Elwing's face was left darkened by shadow, still and silent, as though carven in pure white stone. Her lips were still, pressed together, and if it wasn't with the uncomfortable stiffness or the languid tiredness (restraining a yawn) that Eärendil was used to, it was far from an unfamiliar expression. Her hair was soaked, clinging to her neck and cheeks and shoulders, nearly straight and much longer for it, hanging well past her waist—it would be interesting to see what it came to look like as it started to dry.

In the shadows and the flickering firelight, Eärendil tried to imagine that Doriath was still in its full glory, not a ruined kingdom, and that Elwing was a Princess in Menegroth, not a Queen in Sirion. She would be happier, he was sure, with her entire family returned to her. She might be better-fed too, and taller for it; the people of Sirion did not starve, but it wasn't like there were great surpluses of food. He tried to imagine Dior or one of the lost Princes swinging Elwing across the open floor in a dance, the two of them shrieking with laughter. He tried to imagine her smiling without reservation.

Of course, if Menegroth had never been sacked, Eärendil likely never would have met Elwing. He would still be a refugee in the Havens of Sirion, but she would be a Princess with her world intact, a world where none of the Noldor were welcome.

"What was Doriath like?"

Her eyes snapped to his face, tension flooding into her arms and neck. Elwing stared at him sharply, brow furrowed in confusion and the beginnings of nascent anger. "Why do you want to know?" she asked quietly, fingers knotting so tightly together that they looked like they might snap.

It was too late to back down now. Eärendil's curiosity had left him longing for what knowledge she could impart, and her anger would dissipate, surely, as all of her anger did. "I don't think we've ever talked about Doriath, at least not at length." He didn't quite meet her gaze as he went on, "And I've head many stories about it, each more fantastical than the last. I wanted to know what _you_ could recall of it."

Elwing's expression remained cool, her mouth half-hidden behind her hands. "I remember red berries on holly trees," she said shortly. "That is all. So tell me, Eärendil. What do _you _recall of Gondolin?"

Eärendil was prepared to admit that he deserved that, and to be honest, while the memories of his old home hurt, they did not hurt so much that he could not share at least some of them with her. He stared past Elwing, into space, as the memory of a cloudless pale blue sky filled his vision. "I'd go up and fly kites made of silk in the morning. Voronwë had taught me how to make them, and Mother taught me how to fly them. If we went out very early, Grandfather might come up and join us—though I was never able to convince him to fly one of my kites with us."

_What else do I remember? What, what? There was more, so much more. _He shut his eyes. "We… We looked down on the city. The Sun was just beginning to rise over the green Vale of Tumladen. Down in the city, I could hear someone singing. I don't remember what they were singing about." _Or even what their voice sounded like. I don't remember what Grandfather's voice sounded like, either._

_And yet, I remember _his _voice._

When Eärendil opened his eyes, Elwing was staring at him still. He could detect no trace of the cool nascent anger that had stolen over her face before, but the expression she wore now was utterly inscrutable. "You seem to remember your old home very well," she murmured, and her voice was as far-away as his mind had been.

The pounding of the rain returned to Eärendil's awareness. He nodded slowly. "Yes. I suppose I do."

"I do not," Elwing replied, half-staring out the window, half-staring at him, "as I am sure you have noticed. I was, as you will recall, three years old when Menegroth was sacked and I was brought here." Three years old when my life as I knew it was snuffed out and taken from me, he heard her say, even when no sound passed Elwing's lips. And Eärendil could hear her saying something else without words, a quiet plea.

Don't ask me about it again.

"I… know, Elwing. I'm sorry."

Food was put down in front of them, wooden bowls full of stew. Eärendil stirred in the bowl with his spoon, trying to determine what was in there; the broth was dark, and did not give up its secrets easily. He saw beef, and chunks of white meat that was probably some sort of fish. There were potatoes, and turnips, and radishes. It looked very much like 'supper' tonight for the inn's patrons had been whatever the innkeeper happened to have on hand. Oh well. Eärendil had eaten worse; he tucked in.

For a few minutes, they ate in silence. Elwing picked at her food, eating only unenthusiastically, but that was hardly anything unusual for her; Eärendil couldn't remember Elwing ever showing much enthusiasm for food. "Maybe," she said very softly, staring down into her bowl, "maybe there is more there, I think." Eärendil's eyebrows shot up towards his hairline, surprised to hear her speaking of her old home willingly so soon after shutting the doors on that topic when he broached it. "My father holding me in his lap, and there was a light shining in my eyes. It was so bright that I could not see, and yet, it was not painful."

"There was Ecthelion sitting by the fountain in front of his house, playing a flute. He was going to begin to teach me to play in the autumn," Eärendil recalled heavily.

Her past was, for the most, a blank. A blank punctuated with bloodshed and the sounds of screaming. On the other hand, Eärendil had so many memories. Memories of a lost city, memories of the dead, and the living who were gone.

The light of the Sun and the Moon upon the pools of the Vale of Tumladen. The wind making the pennants flap. Golden Glingal and silvery Belthil, the trees of gold and silver that Turgon had ordered made, in memory of Laurelin and Telperion. His mother's laughter when he would jump onto his parents' bed early in the mornings, shrieking with joy at them to get up.

Meleth, his nurse, a sweet woman with a merry smile, had survived the Fall of Gondolin only to die in the wilderness, before they could reach safety. Hendor, Idril's retainer who had himself carried Eärendil out of the burning city, only to die the same way Meleth had. Ecthelion and his flute-playing, forever silenced. Glorfindel and his golden hair, brighter gold than Idril or Eärendil's, the shadow of his last bright smile left behind, even as he fell from the cliff-side. Duilin the archer, burning on the walls. Enerdhil, the smith who fashioned Glingal and Belthil and the Elessar that, even now, Idril used as a cloak clasp, had moved on to the Isle of Balar.

Turgon, the grandfather whose voice Eärendil could no longer remember. But the memory of Turgon's kindness and the love Eärendil had borne him was not yet spent. He remembered his grandfather, remember the way he had held him in his arms when he would walk through the streets of Gondolin. He remembered that, at least.

Unbidden, other images rose in Eärendil's mind. His mother's cousin, attempting without cease to wrest him from her arms, hands clammy, voice snarling. Maeglin, tall and dark, always staring at him coldly, always watching from the shadows. Then, he brought ruin down on all of their heads. Eärendil had never truly cared for Maeglin, not at all, but never had it crossed his child's mind that his mother's cousin might set himself to killing him. There were reasons, reasons Eärendil had not understood then, and still did not understand, the workings of dark lust and incest, a dark child born in a dark land, a mind bent to murder and treachery. And rape as well? Rape of his fair cousin, who did not want him, did not wish to wed with a cousin, nor with one who looked upon her with such hungry eyes? That, Eärendil did not understand, and did not wish to understand.

And then, he screamed as he tumbled over the side of the wall. It was the scream, that terrible scream, that Eärendil still awoke to sometimes, in the dark of summer nights.

"Lord Tuor told me what it was like to see Gondolin for the first time, when never before had he laid eyes on such splendor," Elwing remarked, a wistful smile playing on her lips. "I would have loved to seen such a sight myself."

"So would I," Eärendil muttered, staring into the night.

But some things were really better left forgotten. If they could be.


	3. Chapter Three

"Lady Idril and Lord Tuor are departing in the morning, are they not?"

The Moon was high in the sky tonight, and waxed to fullness, but it was obscured by wispy shrouds of cloud and the low-lying fogbank hovering over Sirion. If Eärendil was to look up overhead, he would see only a wavering, watery Moon, uncertain of what shape it wanted to be. the stars were obscured entirely. For that reason, Eärendil did not look. He could never be comfortable with a sky with no celestial map upon it.

They were walking home through the quiet, mist-filled streets, the palace looming ever-larger in Eärendil's field of vision. Elwing's soft voice broke the misty silence, her words awoke thoughts Eärendil had not wished to dwell on, and he nodded his head slowly. "Yes, they are." They were leaving tomorrow, sailing into the West. Neither Tuor nor Idril would ever come back, and Eärendil could very well never see either of them again.

"Why?" Elwing asked She sounded as though she was trying very hard to come across as disinterested, hiding her curiosity as best she could.

Eärendil looked over and down at her, eyebrows raised quizzically. "What do you mean?"

Elwing's voice seemed less distinct than usual, possibly thanks to the silvery mist that had fallen over the city, giving the torches of the city streets golden coronae. "I don't really understand why anyone would risk a journey across the breadth of the Sundering Sea, all the way to the Undying Lands," she admitted, staring down at the ground. The strength of her voice ebbed and flowed like the ocean's tide. "Especially not when a ban is leveled against them both. Lady Idril is a Noldo, and Lord Tuor an Adan. From what I understand, the Powers have barred them both from their shores. Why risk a journey, then?"

"My parents wish to call upon the Valar to aid the Elves in their struggles against Morgoth." _And my mother wants them to give her husband back his mind and memory, even if she will not name that as a motive._

"The Powers have never been of much aid to us," Elwing asserted stiffly. "I do not see why they would be of any more aid to me now."

Eärendil did not know precisely who Elwing meant by 'us', if she meant all the Elves of the world, or those who had never left Middle-Earth and their descendants. He suspected she meant the latter. The Exiles desired to return home to the Undying Lands, had stared across the sea like refugees for five centuries. Now, they really were refugees, and their desire to leave was stronger than ever. Kindled also was this fire in the hearts of their children, those who had never laid eyes on the Undying Lands, on lost kin, but who believed it to be their birthright.

This Eärendil knew: Men longed to look on that which they called the Utter West as well. The Blessed Realm they also called it, and this, Eärendil felt, encapsulated the feelings of Men concerning the Undying Lands. They believed that all of their troubles would be over if they could only reach the western shores of the Sundering Seas. Their insatiable curiosity and longing for safety for themselves and their children made the specter of the Undying Lands deeply appealing to them. Appealing enough for sons and daughters to risk their lives on the tumultuous sea.

But the Elves of Beleriand (and, Eärendil suspected, the Elves of wider Middle-Earth as well) had no enthusiasm for journeys into the west. They clung to the eastern earth as though they would wither away to nothing without it. Beleriand was crumbling, was ruined, would likely be dominated by Morgoth within a few decades, but they, Sindar, Green-Elves, Nandor and Avari, would cling to that ruined earth. The Elves of Middle-Earth would cling to the land that they know even as it was falling apart. They would cling to the last crumb of land, and when that fell away, the would sooner drown beneath the foam-capped waves than try to swim for western land.

Even in death, many of them would not accept the Undying Lands. Eärendil had heard the stories. In the starlit days before Oromë had first found the Elves besides the Waters of Awakening, the Elves had not understood death, and when death took them, they rejected the calls of Mandos to the Timeless Halls. They did not understand those calls, so instead they chose a fate that no one properly understood. Even after the Exiles had come into Beleriand and they knew what those calls were, there were still many who rejected the calls, though they were fewer than before. The Exiles considered it wicked and deviant to reject the Undying Lands so utterly, but to the Elves of Beleriand who chose not to let their spirits fly to the Timeless Halls, it was the ultimate expression of loyalty to kin and home. They did not care that none truly understood what became of the spirits who rejected the calls of Mandos.

Elwing, Eärendil hoped, would not be among the stock who rejected the summons to the Timeless Halls. Eärendil knew that, if he were to die on this side of the sea, his spirit would fly to those halls without hesitation, and he hoped never to endure so permanent a separation from she whom he loved. But he also knew that, in every other way, she was the quintessential _Moriquendë_, the quintessential Elf of Middle-Earth, despite being of Thingol's folk (Thingol's great-granddaughter) and supposedly more 'pure.' She was skeptical and dismissive of the Valar. She saw nothing special about the Undying Lands, cleaving instead to the eastern lands she knew and loved. The sea held little appeal. Elwing was descendant of the Ainur, the holy folk who made the Undying Lands their home and loved it over all others, but Melian the Maia's blood must have been thin indeed by the time it reached this High Queen over the Sindar.

"And you will be staying here?" There was on an almost absurdly hopeful note in her voice.

"Of course I will!" Eärendil exclaimed incredulously, his voice seeming unnaturally loud in the misty dusk. "We're getting married soon, aren't we?! It would be rather difficult to accomplish that if I was on a ship bound for the Undying Lands and you were still here!"

Elwing frowned almost imperceptibly, her lips quirking downwards, and Eärendil got the idea that that wasn't what she had meant. He kept himself from wondering, knowing what conclusion his mind would inevitably reach. He knew what she wanted out of him on this score, and didn't want to think about it. It wasn't something he could give her.

After some time, they reached the threshold of the palace. The halls were dark and quiet, everyone from the highest nobles in the city to the lowest of servants and functionaries long since having retired. Eärendil traversed the staircases alongside Elwing, breath bated; in such complete silence, it seemed risky even to breathe too loudly.

Finally, they came to a halt outside of Elwing's bedchamber door. "Elwing…" He hesitated, struggling to find both the right words to say and the courage to say it. "…What do you see, in the future?"

She answered him as though this question was nothing extraordinary. In the darkness, only Elwing's bright silver eyes were readily visible, and they bore into him. "I will try to survive," she said flatly. "I will try to survive and secure the survival of the Sindar. When the time comes to fight the Enemy, I will do so, and if I fall, I pray that I will at least acquit myself with the strength and dignity that my forebears possessed. And you?"

"I…"

Eärendil strived for optimism more than Elwing in regards to the future. Though the future seemed bleak indeed, though all the world was falling into darkness, Eärendil did not entertain visions of his own death. His forefathers had chosen to die valiantly in battle, but it seemed better to Eärendil to hope to win and live, rather than lose and die, but do so spectacularly. _I must believe in a coming dawn to end the long night. Without hope, I have nothing_.

"I want to live long enough to marry you, and see Morgoth blown away like a column of smoke before a sweet western wind."

Eärendil did not voice his wishes, not all of them, then. He did not tell her that he wanted to live long enough to see her happy, happy as he had never seen her. He did not say that he wanted to live long enough to have children by her, live long enough to see them grow up, happy and safe in a world free of Morgoth's blight.

He said nothing, but perhaps his words reached her anyways. Elwing stood on tiptoe—he felt her hand light on his shoulder—and there was the feather-light pressure of her lips on his, cool and dry. Then, she drew him into her bedchamber and shut the door, and they were left in the welcome darkness of a lightless room.


End file.
